My own tribute !

The US Open, which starts today, will be Andre Agassi's last tournament of his professional career. NYTimes published a very well written article about him today. Agassi has been one of my favourite players, for I dont know how long, and I really admire his tennis, his style, and the man himself. I really want him to finish his career on a strong note with a win in this tournament, but I know that it's going to be really tough considering that he is in the toughest draw the tournament can offer.

Slotted into perhaps the toughest quarter of the men’s draw, Agassi and Roddick will have to contend with No. 3 Ivan Ljubicic, former US Open champion and No. 15 seed Lleyton Hewitt and No. 20 Novak Djokovic of Serbia.

Despite the odds, I am hoping that Agassi will do well, and give us as many more matches as he can.

What comes to me as a surprise though is the facets of his out-of-tennis-court life(courtesy NYTimes again).

Consider this :

“In his life after tennis he will accomplish more than what he did playing tennis,” said Patrick McEnroe, the United States Davis Cup captain who lost all four of his matches against Agassi as a player. “It sounds outlandish, but I feel comfortable saying that.”

and

While fashioning a Hall of Fame résumé on the court, he has built a rich, full life away from it. The evidence of that, friends say, is everywhere in the house 15 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip where Agassi lives with his wife, Steffi Graf, and their two children, Jaden Gil, 4, and Jaz Elle, 2. There is not a tennis trophy or tournament memento in sight, nothing at all to indicate that a couple with 30 Grand Slam singles titles between them resides there.

Isnt that cool, and probably awesome. As a child I remember displaying my trophies with pride, but I guess for great people, those metal objects dont mean as much. They know that recognition and respect follows them like a halo, and that they dont need trophies to make a point.

And that's not all. Agassi has a business acumen as well, ample proof of which is the fact that

Agassi and Rogers were among five longtime friends who bought the Golden Nugget hotel on the Strip for an initial cash investment of $50 million. They sold it less than two years later, receiving $163 million in cash.

How many companies boast that kind of earnings ?

As if that wasnt enough, Agassi runs a school, and is a benevolent man - regularly contributing to charity.

I dont think I can do enough justice to his tribute, so I will close it with one of Agassi's own statement which says it all:

When you touch a person’s life outside the lines, it has more permanence to it.

You should definitely read the article, so Go Now!
( also read http://www.usopen.org/en_US/news/articles/2006-08-10/200608101155219679432.html )